Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky – The Armenian genocide drove the artist to the USA

Arshile Gorky was born Vosdanig Manoug Adoian on 15 April 1904 in Khorkom near Van in the former Osmanian Empire. His father, an Armenian farmer, left the family in the care of his brother and emigrated to the USA to escape the threat of conscription into the Turkish army. Gorky grew up with his mother and sisters and showed his artistic skill at an early age: he made his first attempts at woodcuts at the age of four, perhaps in response to the richly decorated tombstones in his local abbey. The emerging genocides of the Armenians by the young Turkish regime forced Arshile Gorky to flee and following the death of their mother, he made it to the USA with his younger sister Yartoosh. There, as a sixteen-year-old, he met his father again and could attend school. His father, however, remained a stranger to him, which is why he eventually built a new identity for himself in New York, socialised with young artists and adopted the pseudonym Arshile Gorky. 

Many influences shaped the gifted autodidact

Arshile Gorky acquired his knowledge of the fine arts mostly as an autodidact. He studied the works of his role models, attended exhibitions, read appropriate literature, and initially sharpened his abilities through making numerous copies. Artists such as Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso and in particular Paul Cézanne impressed him greatly. Even when the examination of these great names left clear traces in the Armenian’s work, he nevertheless showed himself to be astoundingly independent and used versatile and sometimes quite different styles in his drawings and paintings. The prevailing realism of the 1930s in the USA did not satisfy the artist, and he instead sought his own formal language, which led the way to increasingly abstract representation, and then to Surrealism in the 1940s, whose protagonists, notably André Breton, valued the young artist and encouraged him. Despite this support, Arshile Gorky turned away from Surrealism and continued on his artistic search. Although he is considered a trailblazer of Abstract Expressionism, he himself did not see ii as the direction he wanted. 

Torn biography and personal misfortunes

Arshile Gorky also proved his power of creativity in the narration of his biography. Many of the artist’s notes came exclusively from his imagination and had obvious inconsistencies. For example, referring to the apparent similarity of names, he claimed a blood connection to the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, although the latter, like the Armenian painter himself, had only adopted a pseudonym and was actually called Peshkov. In 1941, he married Agnes Magruder, had two daughters, and in 1947 moved with his young family to Sherman in Connecticut where he had a large barn converted into a studio. When this caught fire, a large part of his library as well as paintings and drawings were lost. Colon cancer and lameness in his painting arm from a car accident thrust Gorky into a deep depression which led to sleep problems, alcohol addiction and violent outbreaks. After drunkenly pushing his wife down the stairs, she left him with their two daughters. 

Ashile Gorky committed suicide in his studio in Sherman on 21 July 1948.